Jury's Reasoning Still Just Speculation

LOS ANGELES — Eager to go home after their quick verdict, the silence of jurors in the O.J. Simpson trial left the nation awash in speculation about whether they rushed to judgment in a case as complex as it was long.

"I feel free," said juror Brenda Moran as she arrived at her mother's home in Compton after 266 days of sequestration.

Asked why jurors took less than four hours to reach a verdict, she said: "We were there for nine months. We didn't need another nine months to decide. I think we did the right thing. In fact, I know we did."

The first indication of the jury's thinking came Tuesday night in an interview with ABC-TV. The network quoted the daughter of one of the jurors as saying her mother had told her Simpson probably was guilty but that she voted to acquit because of the racism of former Detective Mark Fuhrman.

Juror Anise Aschenbach made the comments in a telephone conversation with her daughter, the network said, identifying the daughter only as Denise.

"She said, `I think he probably did do it, Denise,' " the daughter said. "I said something like, `Gosh, you're kidding me.' And she said, `No,' and she's crying. So I said: `Why? What happened? What was the thing?'

"She said it was because there wasn't enough evidence. And I said, `Why?' She said, `Because of Mark Fuhrman.' "

The 10 women and two men appeared relaxed Tuesday after hearing 50,000 pages of testimony during most of a year spent away from their loved ones.

In rejecting the prosecution's case against Simpson, the panel of nine African-Americans, two whites and one Hispanic vindicated the faith criminal defense lawyers often place in jury selection experts. The Simpson team hired one of the best, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, to help choose the jury.

As the jurors reportedly entertained lucrative tabloid media offers for their stories, legal pundits stepped in to offer their views of how the panel reached such a swift decision.

Some experts said sloppiness by police and the coroner's office in collecting and analyzing evidence helped doom the prosecution.

Others argued that prosecutors made several fatal mistakes, including relying on Fuhrman as a key witness and underestimating the racial symbolism of the case.

Some contended the jurors apparently accepted lead defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr.'s challenge to use their verdict to strike a blow against racism in the Los Angeles Police Department and the judicial system at large.

The only black male juror, a marketing executive described by defense lawyers as a Black Panther in the 1960s, gave Simpson and his attorneys what looked like a black power salute, his fist raised in the air, as he left.

"It became a symbolic case of O.J. as we know him vs. Mark Fuhrman as we know him. I don't know how else the jury could have seen it until we hear from them," said Harland Braun, a Los Angeles defense attorney.

Los Angeles District Atty. Gil Garcetti, expressing the prosecution's "profound disappointment" with the verdict, accused the jury of ignoring the evidence.

"It was clear-at least it is to me and I think other members of the prosecution team-this was an emotional trial. Apparently, their decision was based on emotion. That overcame reason," he said.

Despite his impassioned closing arguments about police racism, Cochran said Tuesday that the jurors had based their decision solely on the facts.

Cochran said prosecutors couldn't prove that Simpson "had enough time to commit this crime, and he couldn't go upstairs, change clothes, bathe, throw away all the clothes, the knife, the weapons, the shoes and all that stuff. (Prosecutor Marcia) Clark gave him five minutes to do all of that. You think about that."

Los Angeles law professor Norman Garland disagreed that race was the pivotal factor, citing the fact that the quick verdict was reached by a panel that included two whites and one Hispanic.

"There was apparently no division on the jury," Garland said. "That suggests that this was not a racial decision. One would have expected one holdout (if there had been a racial split)."

Still, until jurors come forth with their own versions of the deliberations, some observers voiced concern about how the verdict might be interpreted.

"Unfortunately, this provides ammunition for those who believe if you have a predominantly black jury that the jury will not or is less likely to convict a black defendant," said Yale Kamisar, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. "But black juries convict black defendants every day everywhere."